The impact of Facebook usage on academic performance

Abstract

This research intends to examine how spending time on Facebook affect students' academic performance. It explores behavioural factors affecting students utilising Facebook. Questionnaires were personally distributed to 667 undergraduate and postgraduate students from the University of Malaya to determine their intentions for using Facebook, which will allow us to discern the symptoms related to excessive Facebook usage by students. The AMOS software was used to hypothesise the relationship between the variables. The results show that students use Facebook for entertainment, relaxing/escaping, and passing time, but not for socialising and social information. Spending time on Facebook has a positive effect on their academic performance, which indicated that the time spent on Facebook did not affect their education. It is anticipated that the findings from this study would provide clear insights on how the behavioural factors of a student affect their academic performance. This research would help educationists, parents, and the students themselves development appropriate measures to control and curb excessive usage of Facebook or using Facebook as a learning tool.